Kimi Raikkonen was pleased with his first day of running at the wheel of the new Ferrari at Jerez.

Raikkonen, who struggled with the handling of last year’s F14-T, said its replacement was “a lot different – it’s a new car”.

“You usually know if the car is good or not good and obviously this year is a completely different story than last year. It’s a positive start and a nice, good day.”

Ferrari has been through an upheaval since the end of last year with the departure of Fernando Alonso and several key technical staff. But Raikkonen says the signs are good so far.

“The whole team has done a good job over the winter after last year and the difficult times,” he said. “It was a positive first day, lot of improvements in areas that we have difficulties.”

“Obviously it’s just the first day and unfortunate that it was wet, the circuit stayed damp most of the day. But I think we had good running and got some mileage and as I said big thanks to the team to build us a reasonable, good starting point.”

It's positive news that Kimi sounds happy and optimistic. But a good feeling doesn't always produce good lap times. Kimi is properly a veteran racer at this point, and I'm hoping the years of experience has given him a sense of not only a good feeling, but the speed at which this car can lap in.

Yes, obviously Kimi knows when a car is good or not. He didn't specifically say. But atleast it sounds like there could be some handling improvements. Of course there is always still a lot of ground to make up before the first race.

Quote: Sonny wrote in post #57Noticed this interesting change on Ferrari's front wing today. Look at how straight and parallel to the ground the "black wings" are just in front of the front suspension on the release car.

Here, Ferrari have adopted something similar to the McLaren bunny ears of 2008.